El barrio(lage) desconocido by David Ting ‘17 This poem was inspired by Augustin Hadelich and Pablo Sáinz-Villegas’s marvelous violin/guitar collaboration, titled “Histoire du Tango.” Their performance was an aural record of a fruitful, evolving friendship. The poem’s title is a wordplay on bariolage, a violin technique familiar to all ears, even if not by name. Wikipedia describes the technique: The bowed string instrument musical technique bariolage (French for “multi-colored” or … “odd mixture of colors,” from the verb barioler, “to streak with several colors”) … This may involve quick alternation between a static note and changing notes, that form a melody … The static note is usually an open string note, which creates a highly resonant sound.
Bariolage is split into two words: barrio, Spanish for “neighborhood,” and Lage, German for “place.” The barrio desconocido is the “unknown neighborhood” created by the music, that palpable but invisible and mysterious community in the concert hall. As for the connotation of Lage, Pablo’s guitar was made in Germany. Structurally, the poem resembles a bariolage. If reading alone, ignore the split between the columns and read across the lines as you would a page of prose. Alternatively, the two monologues may be read simultaneously by two readers.
Red button sealing his closed collar
Red handkerchief nested in his open collar
The only red they were wearing that evening I didn’t know that they’d be so handsome It is good to think of the two men (la red means “network” in Spanish) As a circuit They will show us the rooms Gleaming with grounded flamenco and airy folk We will forget what they’ve told us We will also forget That outside, there is moonlight And upon exiting the hall, you will want to The concert fuses night and daylight Excerpting an impossible moment From the fabric of history. What time of night is it in Richardson, really? The unknown neighborhood’s stucco walls Are being freshly plastered Like the heroism that is required To feel the nostalgia for an unknown home, Augustin exudes deep gratitude for the music, For all, and this moved me.
We didn’t think we would be spoken to this soon That neck belongs to the handkerchief Of a matador And we must continue, the concert must go on We cannot spend all night talking to them They must show their true colors And feel ourselves listen like never before. What dances in us when we do not rise? Marna told us that we were allowed To dance in the aisles with freed hands So the Manuel de Falla: The opening canción was El paño moruno, Or “The Moorish cloth,” paño being cloth Moruno is also a culinary term To think of Pablo cooking pleases everyone The guitar conjures twilit arabesques, and also Dusky neighborhoods, which will develop Like Polaroids at the performance’s end We will be shown pictures of home, We can be home in so many places Loved in ways crossing so many languages